Kai’s Chef Jessica Murphy Makes Bottura Book

In a recent New Zealand Listener article, Lauraine Jacobs writes about world famous chef Massimo Bottura and his new cookbook, Bread is Gold: Extraordinary Meals with Ordinary Ingredients, which includes an offering from New Zealand-born Galway-based chef Jessica Murphy.

Bottura’s book is filled with recipes from high-profile chefs who volunteered to work at his pop-up restaurant, Refettorio Ambrosiano, which opened in a run down part of Milan on the occasion of the Expo 2015 world fair.

The Italian restaurateur’s temporary establishment was inspired by the food-focused theme, ‘Feeding the planet, energy for life’.

Surplus food from the expo was delivered daily to feed lunch to local children and dinner to the homeless. International chefs who attended the expo were invited to give up a day to cook in the Refettorio Ambrosiano kitchens.

Bottura’s project was a resounding success, leading to similar initiatives in Rio de Janeiro, London and Paris.

Murphy runs Kai, a café and restaurant on the coast of Galway, Ireland, with her husband. She has cooked in the Milan and London Refettorio restaurants and says Bottura is “a real honey” and that she is “really chuffed to be in the book”.

Murphy was named Best Chef in Ireland 2018 by the Restaurants Association of Ireland in May. It’s an impressive achievement for the chef from Wairoa in Hawke’s Bay but she says, “When you come from there it certainly sets you up for the big wide world over here.”

Original article by Lauraine Jacobs, New Zealand Listener, August 30, 2018.